Fantastic! Couldn’t be better. I’m getting down to the wire. I’m due in about two weeks now.

It’s a girl... Emily Marie. She’s really a person already.

I’d love to have another child. Nayib is 14 already, so the two of them are pretty far apart in age, but the end of the pregnancy is really the wrong time to ask. I’ve had a great pregnancy, but I really need to tour after this. Who knows? I’m actually the most fit I’ve ever been. I eat healthier than I ever have, and this time, I’ve only gained the weight of the baby. When you see me, you’ll see that it just looks like I swallowed a basketball.

Yes. I’m made of only the best titanium. That’s why I’m so fit. If I go more than a week without exercising, I get sore and stiff.

Yes. This time I’m going to take some time off. When I go back out, I’m going to take her and my son along.

They are four years old now, and now we have five puppies... two of Ricky’s kids and one of Lucy’s kids. Plus two miniature kangaroos.

We’ve got the Cardozo Hotel with the Alioli restaurant in it, and a Cuban restaurant named Lario’s on Ocean Drive that was actually voted the #1 Cuban restaurant in the U.S. by Gourmet Magazine.

If, with these steel rods in my back, I beep through security at airports.

Oh, God no! I was appointed by President Bush to be a part of the U.S. Ambassadorial team for the U.N. And I learned one important thing about politics... not to get involved! It seems the minute you get into office, it becomes all about foundations and people’s vested interests. Which just curbs your ability to help or do anything concrete. Not to mention your dirty laundry gets dragged out, so it’s really the furthest thing from our minds. Music is not competitive in that way. Not everybody likes what you do, but at least they don’t try to kill you because they don’t like your song.

Yes. The thing about Jon and I is, even though we are not political, we are political figures because we are Cuban. With this whole Cuban crisis going on now, we tend to get thrown into the middle. Jon was in Latin America and there’s a lot of Castro forces there and, because Jon and I are both huge in Cuba, they just try to do whatever they can to say something disreputable about us.

When I sang at the Pan Am Games way back, Cuba tried to boycott, but the committee said they weren’t going to cancel, so they backed down. Anyway, some guy that wasn’t even at Jon’s press conference said that he had made some pro-Castro statements, which was the furthest thing from the truth. You just have to live with the media and face it. He did, and they retracted their statement; however a lot of harm was already done here. Jon got really depressed because it was his first foray into the world of the media, so I told him to develop thick skin and stand up for what he believes in.

There are a handful of people who work for us we trust with our lives. And that’s how it has be done because we really love what we do. We don’t run things as a business; it’s run with a lot of love and feeling. The people around us are a part of the family. Even my best friend from high school works with us.

That’s really Emilio’s baby. He plays me things and asks my opinion, but these are the artists he’s signed, and the only contribution I made to "The Specialist" soundtrack was the song, "Turn The Beat Around," which is also on my album. That really came after the fact because Jerry Weintraub and Sly [Stallone] were in town while we were recording the song for my album and they just flipped and said they wanted it for the movie.

Yes. We’ve had great people like Phil Ramone and Arif Mardin come through and many, many great artists who’ve recorded in our studios. I think they love it because it’s so private and no one else is recording there when you are.

There have been II movies made here in the last three months. The difference now is that people don’t just come here, make movies and leave. Now they stay. So we have great crews to work with and Florida is a "Right To Work" state, so there are no union problems.

Yes, but I want to do a movie when it’s right. I want to put myself on the line only if it really means something, not to just do it.

He’s a great drummer. He’s played piano and sax, but music’s really in his blood. He’s really good at it. He’s taking drum lessons and video production at school, and he’s going to do something in the business for sure. In fact, he got a credit in "The Specialist" as one of [Jerry] Weintraub’s assistants.

That he’s such a cut-up. And that he’s so very warm. People see him and think he’s so serious, and they have a ton of respect for him, but what they don’t know is that he’s so funny. He enjoys life a great deal. One of the most fun things we do is preparing the yearly advertisement for HITS!

I picked songs that really meant something to me throughout my life.

One of the reasons was because I couldn’t tour with the pregnancy and an album like "Mi Tierra" requires a tour.

This album has a lot of live elements because in the ‘60s that was how they recorded. But when I got pregnant, I decided to alleviate the pressures of a tour until after the baby. The next album will be very Afro-Cuban, extremely percussive and very live.

He played acordion on this one. He’s a mean accordionist. Nobody knows that about him. In 1975, which was the first time I ever saw him play, my mother dragged me to this wedding and I heard him perform "Do The Hustle" on the accordion and that did it for me. I thought, "Anyone who has the nerve to play ‘Do The Hustle’ on the accordion is for me!"

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